/lit/ - Literature

I invited /sf/ over: >>>/sf/883

>>7862

Don't worry, fixed the broken link in the second post.

So, what's /lit/'s favorite Asimovian polemics novel?

>>7879

it depends.

i really liked the foundation trilogy.

i liked dune up to god emperor.

i liked a few heinlein novels.

but i would not put them in the same bracket.

>>7879

The fuck's up with the word filter?

>>7883

Never read Dune, I must admit. What's wrong with God Emperor?

>>7886

>The fuck's up with the word filter?

Number two under the FAQ:

https://8ch.net/lit/oddsandends.html

BO is planning to let it drop after the transition to Next. It is getting kinda annoying.

>>7879

I do lean toward Asimov, and of the many in the series specifically Foundation and Empire. It's been a while since I've read any Asimov, but F&E sticks with me as a favorite. And not just the story(ies) but the style of how it was written.

Alfred Bester, L. Neil Smith, and Ian M Banks I've been read more recently. Each has a favorite work.

Though I don't count myself as an aficionado of furry fiction, the most recent author of science speculative fiction I've enjoyed is Paul Lucas.

>>7879

Anything by Peter Watts, Old Man's War and a number of short stories. I've read far more short stories than novels, when it comes to Australian Pneumonics.

/liberty/ should be on its way now: >>>/liberty/14005

jews

Hey /lit/, how do I stop being a pleb and read good shit? You know, like the /lit/ starter pack?

>first

Faggot I hosted one on /fit/ and /ebola/ ling before your pleb ass, and we had one on /monster/ and /am/ too.

Don't call yourself the first, whore.

have a bump though

>>7905

Also, /liberty/ reporting in.

How long has this board been here? I figured it would be deader than dead but this is decently active for a niche board. Color me impressed.

what's some stuff i should read ?

>>7886

sorry i meant to say that i liked god emperor too.

heretics is a little weaker.

>>7901

i know, right?

>>7904

i'd say you might start from what actually interests you.

what is the one thing or the things that make you want to spend your time doing?

>>7911

>all that processed meat

really?

>>7913

see >>7920

>>7914

I'm reading Seeing by Saramago, how much of a pleb am i?

/fit/-/liberty/ hybrid here again.

I'm currently reading "Good Profit" and plan to read "The Inferno" by Dante Alighieri afterwards.

/leftypol/ recommended Ego and His Own by Stirner, so I'll probably read that afterwards.

>>7903

>commie

>anti-semitic

>>7905

Don't forget the /baphomet/ tea party.

>>7932

I really enjoyed 2000 leagues, even though somehow, being a novel, 80% of it was scenery porn. Actually, I think that's part of the reason I enjoyed it. Particularly the first underwater hunting scene.

>>7945

You tell that to the dirty commie, not me!

>>7925

not me.

>>7945

>he doesn't know about stalin

>>7942

/pol/ here, i don't know much about sartre but i rememeber reading about his analysis of antisemitism both from "antisemites" and hardcore zionists, and i remember agreeing with both the authors that his opinion was kinda stupid.

>>7951

Thank you!

Any David Foster Wallace aficionados around?

>>7964

the no discernible talent guy?

cannot discern if the appreciation he gets is just memes.

>>7964

His essays are well worth anyones time. I'm not a fan of his fictional novels though.

>>7966

>cannot discern if the appreciation he gets is just memes.

He's certainly not a bad author, he understood the tools of the trade and knew what he was doing with great precision. As with any given author his style and method does not work with everyone. I'd say at least give a few of his essays a spin, so that you may see he's more than just some passing inane meme fad. If you don't (like me) care to tackle his door stoppers then don't. Read something else, talk about it here, and leave the patrican/pleb (Double P philosophically! Gettit?) zombies to duke it out back at halfchan.

>>7964

Yeah.

>>7966

>>7970

I can see why people would feel smug about getting through a paper kettlebell like Infinite Jest, all memes aside. The thing is that once you're half way in you'll probably just burn through it happily and wish there was more.

>>7996

Let's see

santa claus

someone's dad

russian hitler

chink overlord

dont be a pussy bernie sanders legalize murder

>>7998

Where's Stallman?

I'm not drinking tea at the moment, but I've had three cups today already, so I think that counts.

Anyway, I didn't want to create a new thread entirely for this, but I just finished reading my first story by Kafka, "Description of a Struggle," and I'm wondering whether I'm meant to understand it, because I understood absolutely none of it. It just seemed like a surreal dreamworld with no real order to it, so nothing really made sense. Was this intentional, or am I just an idiot?

>>8073

i cannot tell you, because i haven't read it.

i can tell you that when i read the metamorphosis i felt that probably the important thing was not why or how gregor became a bug but rather how the characters and specifically his family reacted to it.

i hope it helps.

>>8077

That does help a bit, I guess. It's kind of odd that the characters would see such bizarre things happening and not react to any of it at all, as if it's completely normal. The ending was the part that probably confused me the most, though, when the character returns to the "real world" and they just start acting completely insane.

>>8084

well, "kafkaesque" did not enter the dictionary for nothing.

/pol/ here. Trying to get /fit/ too.

Well, /pol/ sympathetic at least but I don't tend to post much anywhere, just lurk a lot.

Personally I think a lot of the problems we have are due to even those with a clear view of reality being self-insulated little shits who, given the opportunity to artificially fulfill their need for people, never engage anyone around them, become more and more occupied telling those that agree with them anyway what they already think, letting the whole culture and society go on stagnating. So really posting much anywhere I'm being a hypocrite.

But whatever.

I read Journey to the End of the Night awhile back and it was some of the greatest shit I ever HAVE read. Like Vonnegut if Vonnegut created protagonists that didn't seem useless and disempowered, quit whining a moment to just let the hilarity of the race to sink in.

Main authors I'm into are Philip K Dick and Hunter S Thompson though. Harlan Ellison is also amazing, even if he is enough of a Jew to copyright his own goddamn name.

Hey /lit/! Currently writing a novel set in the Warhammer 40k universe (I know, it is science fantasy, not science fiction, but whatever), and it is all about the story of two young men drafted into military service.

One of them is called Illius, he is slim and really tall, this is mainly due to him growing up on a low gravity Agri-world. He is also the Squad's Vox-caster. The other one is called Arcon, he is tough and cheeky and could be best described as a cunt on two legs, and he is supposed to be the grenadier.

Anyways: the two barely know each other. They have literally just met inside the drop ship, just as Illius is about to boil over and punch the cunt to his right in the face the dropship is hit and it crashes.

Only the two of them survive, Illius is relatively unharmed, while Arcon breaks his ancle and has to walk on two sticks. They are both found and picked up by a convoy from another dropship, which landed a dew kilometers off the original landing site, saw Illius's and Arcon's ship go down and decided to swing by and help out any survivors.

So Illius and Arcon both follow the convoy and the two get to talk. Illius doesn't really want to talk at all, but Arcon is, despite his broken ankle, a fucking annoying cunt about everything he sees. Arcon is from a hive wolrd, and this means that he doesn't know a lot of the shit around him. He has never even seen a mountain, or a tree in his life. And so this annoying fuckback of a cunt is constantly asking questions about this and that, and because Illius thinks he has to proof how dumb Arcon is he is really bitchy about explaining things.

One of the coversations goes like this:

A:"Hey Ill?"

I:"What is it now?"

A:"What's that big thing over there?"

I:"I told you, a large group of trees is called a forest. Did you ding your head in that crash?"

"No, not that forest thing, I mean that REALLY big one behind it."

"Behind the forest?"

"Yes! That tall, grey, concrete thing."

"The mountain?! You don't have mountains where you are from?"

"No."

…

"What is it?"

"I told you, it's a mountain. M-o-u-n-t-a-i-n."

"I get that, but what IS it?"

"It's a big pile of rocks, and stone. What did you expect? Some huge building?"

"Well, it's large, grey and looks like concrete. Seems like a building to me."

…

"So who made it?"

"Made what?"

"The mountain!"

"Nobody did."

"How did the rocks get there?"

"They just are. Mountains don't become."

"But…why? Why would someone pile up rocks just like that? It must have taken years!"

"I told you, mountains are just there They are like air. You breath it and only question it when it smells bad."

…

"Do you have mountains on your home planet?"

"Yes. To the east of our farm."

"Are they bigger than the ones here?"

"They are about the same size."

"And who made them?"

"Why won't this go into your head? Nobody did, mountains are just there! Now shut up!"

"But nothing is just there! Everything was made once!"

"Too bad, mountains are. Just like the air and the oceans."

…

"What are oceans?"

>>8292

> being self-insulated little shits who, given the opportunity to artificially fulfill their need for people, never engage anyone around them, become more and more occupied telling those that agree with them anyway what they already think, letting the whole culture and society go on stagnating.

bah.

eventually you grow out of it.

>>8874

>"What's that big thing over there?"

>I:"I told you, a large group of trees is called a forest.

wouldn't he realize that it's just a lot of trees?

wouldn't the question be likely to be what is a tree?

also, aren't guard regiments sorted out by planet of origin?

>>8878

When stuff goes wrong and there are too many recruits from planet A to put into one regiment, and very few recruits from Planet B, C, D, E, and F they might as well just make one pure A regiment and one half A+rest regiment. This is supposed to be the case here, where Illius is from a very low population agriworld, which has barely any men to give, and Arcon is from an absolutely overpopulated hive world. It's never really explored in the lore of 40k, and if one major warleader wants to have two regiments, you better get him two fucking regiments.

It's also not the beginning of the conversation. Illius had already explained what a tree is, and what a forest is, and Arcon had already seen both at this point, but Illius assumed that Arcon meant the forest when Arcon pointed at that "big thing", mainly he doesn't want to think that Arcon could actually be smart after all. Illius just assumes that this rat from the sewers is too stupid to remember what a forest is, even though he was just told.

>>8894

i must say that ultimately it doesn't seem like the kind of conversation that would happen between two people that almost went at each other little time before. is there some context missing?

>>8874

Not bad, I think it illustrates some decent characterization.

A common theme in W40k works is ignorance of the wider world. One of the few advantages of being in an IG regiment is the mind opening effects of travel. It's not exactly an intended benefit, and the line troops are hardly a part of the jet-setting class, but the effect is a potential tool for writers to play with.

Although the world building background influences and adds a certain structural logic to what characters do, keep in mind it's the dialog and characterization that are more important to most readers.

>>8906

Well, Illius would feel kinda bad for being so mad at Arcon earlier after that poor asshole broke his ankle. And Arcon is used to being treated like literal shit, just like everyone treats eachother on a crime ridden New York to the power of 10 scaled up to the size of an entire planet with a population density three times that of Tokyo.

Arcon is an asshole, but he doesn't realize he is, he is so used to being an ass that he assumes it's normal.

Illius however comes from a world where meeting a stranger, or seeing more than 10 people at the same time is something exciting. He had a lot of stress on the transport ship (where all imperial recruits receive their training), and his nerves were already about to snap. When Arcon wanted to know what was written on the badge on his own uniform and Illius could't read it due to bad lighting, Arcon's past kicked in and made him say :"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you can't ACTUALLY read.", with the biggest shit eating grin on his face.

Illius was about to smack that dumb cun't, he had to scream and shout, but not only because he was angry. But also because for some reason the floor was no longer the floor, it was the wall to his left.

Luckily Illius landed on a cushion, which was yelling at him to stand up again.

Again, in a stroke of luck Illius went unconscious before the landing ship broke apart, and didn't experience the horrors that followed.

Now Illius feels guilty, not only because he was about to scream or possibly harm a fuckbag, but also because an entire landing ship full of good men died, and only he and the most gaping asshole of the entire planet survived. He is tryig to make up for that by doing his best.

To be honest, the entire thing developed from a thread on half-tg where we were discussion the transportation of biological waste (read: human feces) from Hive planets to Agri worlds to use as manure. Don't expect too much.

>>8874

>"So who made it?"

"Made what?"

"The mountain!"

"Nobody did."

Wouldn't he say "the Emperor" you dirty heathen?

>>8921

THIS.

>>8915

honestly. it's far better explained and characterized than i thought.

for what it's worth i'm impressed.

>>8928

Thanks. It is easy for me to come up with dialoge, that stuff just flows out of me like it was shit after eating rotten fish.

However I am having a lot of trouble with everything that is not dialog. I don't want the novel to be dialog only, because that would force the discussion to topics like the crash in order for the reader to understand why the characters act a certain way, but in doing so I would cripple the natural feeling of it all.

Does anyone have any tips on how to describe scenes where the main character is merely looking at something, or observing a procedure? I want to describe the images as I have them in my head, but all I can come up with would involve "around 2.53 meters to her 7 o'clock position waited a truck, which faced towards the hill on her 3 o'clock and were approximately 300 meters tall and 4 kilometers away", which doesn't feel natural at all and more like an engineers way to describe things.

>>8959

What works for me is to relish in what strange comparisons and descriptions I have in my head. Tomorrow, whenever you see a car, look at its facial expression. This should be good practice for getting a feeling of how weird pattern-matching can be.

>>8959

> or observing a procedure?

in that case, doing your research, is key, i guess. in and outside 40k universe.

>>8959

who pictures every exact distance and time of day?

>>8975

>who pictures every exact distance

i think what he is saying is that he has difficulty explaining what is happening to the characters without writing it in a factual, essay-style way.

>time of day

do you really not understand military callouts?

>>8976

I thought the girl was time travelling. If not, it's easy to say she is hearing the loud truck behind her.

>>8962

Describing objects is not too hard, but in what position they are, or in what direction they are facing is to me.

>>8977

> I thought the girl was time travelling.

U wot?

>>8981

I figured it's a time travel story rather than you'd have difficulty using 7 o'clock instead of behind. I think you could also say the truck is a knight's move behind her if you would be imitating a tile-based game.

>>8986

Jesus, you are truly retarded. I want to write a story, not the rules to a fucking tabletop game.

>>9127

>referencing the nature of what you're basing the story on is retarded